


Gods of Lost Causes

by Fantasyenabler



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Firefly
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Anal Sex, Crossover, Het, Multi, Slash, Threesome, alternate universe-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-11
Updated: 2010-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:35:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasyenabler/pseuds/Fantasyenabler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Good friends don't let good friends wallow in grief.  Not without going out and helping them out with drunken pick-ups anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gods of Lost Causes

If there's one thing Mal can count on in this 'verse, it's that no one will ever understand his relationship with Zoe Washburne. How he doesn't hide the many things she is to him--friend, sister, comrade-in-arms, confidant, soulmate--yet won't say a word one way or the other about whether or not they have ever been lovers. It's a little bit of silence that he knows causes a lot of folk to think he's hiding something there, and truth be told, he's fine with that. It's not like it's any of their _go tsao de_ business anyway.

Still, he has to admit, it's a confounding dynamic for most, with the possible exception of River. He'll never tell anyone though that it all boils down to the one item they leave off that list, time and time again.

Put simply, she is his personal goddess of war.

His untouchable icon. The one being who has seen the only actions of his that will ever truly matter in this life. Making anything else that could ever happen between them look downright senseless, pointless and crude.

So that's why when her husband dies a brutal death right in front of her, he never even considers trying to to end her loneliness by taking Wash's place.

It's also why when that loneliness gets to be too much for him to bear, they find themselves staring at each other across a dirty hotel room on a remote piece of rock like Olivia, both of them naked as jaybirds, but neither one of them in a position to touch.

No, he leaves that for the young man they picked up, the one Zoe homed right in on the moment the bartender whispered to her the word, "Colonial." The one Mal wasn't so sure of given what he'd been told about these people, how the thousand or so of them that are left are pretty much settled down in the middle of Olivia's nowhere, waiting and wanting to die.

This one, though--this "Lee," if Mal heard him right over the low-level noise that loves to call every damp, dismal bar home--he's doing a half-decent imitation of someone who's trying to live, Mal thinks.

Or at the very least, someone who isn't quite ready to just fall down and die.

There were plenty of those after the Battle of Serenity Valley, Mal remembers, as he settles down in the room's one rickety chair. Another time, another night, he might have indulged himself in recalling how those lost souls used to be his friends, how they shared a common enemy and a common goal, one that ended in a common defeat.

For right now though, he pushes those thoughts away. For right now, he just sits and watches.

Watches Zoe push the smaller man back against a wall, her dark skin sliding across his light. Her taller body looms over his, but Mal can't see where he's intimidated or even offended by a woman trying to match him strength for strength. Instead, Lee just plants his hands on either side of her face and pulls her down to his level, her wide mouth opening up to his small one, and tilts her so that the plundering is on a more equal level. As they kiss, his fingers wind through the long, black curls at the back of her head, and she answers by reaching out and tugging on his own unruly waves in a way that tells Mall she's been itching to do that ever since they first saw him. She bites her way across his bared neck, his mouth falling open around a soundless moan, and his eyes widen so much that Mal can easily see their color from across the room.

Blue. Which isn't that big of a deal. After all, it's not like Mal doesn't have blue eyes his own damn self.

Still, Mal finds himself getting up and fetching one of the bottles they carried up here. He takes a deep drink, closing his eyes as he does.

The liquor burns down his throat, and he tries not to gasp. Especially when he suddenly hears River's voice from the day before, the words she spoke when she brought them into orbit around Olivia, close enough to see the enormous metal hulk that had planted itself miles deep inside the vast, open wastes of the rim planet's lonely desert. "A dying ship becomes the lone survivor, saved only by the self-sacrifice of a ship of living machines," River had sighed, and Mal had listened as he always did, whenever her vision unfocused and she spilled out a group of strangers' secrets. "They heard the noise of the Alliance and thought they were home free." She'd reached up and made the necessary course correction to bring them into Olivia's lone port. "Too bad nothing they heard warned them about the local flock of Reavers. They were surrounded before most of them even had the time to scream."

Yeah. Too bad, he thinks.

Too many times, the 'verse is just too damn bad.

A noise behind him causes him to put the bottle down and turn, just in time to see Zoe tackle her pale-skinned playmate and knock him down onto the bed, her breasts pressed into the muscles of his chest as she holds him down and does her best to kiss the breath right out of his lungs. Lee's hands grip her around her waist, lifting her and repositioning her so that her hips are more in line with his, and they both start pushing against each other in a way that tells Mal that all of the initial sorties are nearly over and the real battle is about to get underway.

He reaches for the bottle, and lifts it to take another drink. There'd been a gameplan here, one that'd called for his being here, but the more he watches, the more he wonders if he's really vital to this particular engagement. Any doubts he had about this Colonial being alive enough for Zoe have vanished over the last half hour or so, along with all of Mal's worries that there was no spirit left inside that pretty body, behind that pretty face. Instead, he's proving he's a match for her, warrior to her warrioress, a god to her goddess.

It makes it even more of a shame that all Zoe still wants is the too-mortal man whose joyful reverence of his goddess made her gladly come down off her mountaintop and be human for him.

So much more of a shame.

"Mal?" Zoe's voice makes him set the bottle down and look up, to see two sets of eyes staring at him, one deep brown, one brilliant blue, both of them questioning. "Mal?" she asks again, his name obviously all she feels the need to say.

And really, it is. He knows what she's asking, what they're both asking. And for a moment, he considers saying he can't, that he's not needed here, that he's spent too much time wallowing in his own thoughts for his body to be truly useful here.

He doesn't have a chance though. Because ever since the day they first met, outside the recruiting post where they both joined up, Zoe's never needed River's psychic powers to be able to see right through him. "Come here, Mal," she says, as she shifts back and pulls Lee up into a sitting position so she can whisper in his ear. He nods, and she turns her attention back to Mal. "I said, come here, Mal. Don't make me say it again."

He grins, unable to help himself. "Yes, ma'am," he says, as he crawls onto the bed, drawing near to where the other two sit. "Bossy, ain't she?" he asks, glancing at Lee too briefly to allow any true eye contact. "I'm not too sure I remember signing on for 'bossy,' do you?"

Fingers ghosting down the outside of his arm make him pull his gaze away from the dingy bed covers. Lee's smirking at him as he continues to touch him. "The lady's in charge," he says in the kind of tone that sounds like he's sharing a private joke, the kind that makes Mal's eyes narrow, makes him want to ask what's going on here.

A second later, he knows what's going on as Lee stretches up and kisses him.

A second after that, Mal's just holding on, long arms wrapped around the shorter man's thickly muscled torso, as Lee shows him that Zoe isn't the only person in the room who knows how to suck the air right out of someone's lungs. Behind him, he hears Zoe moving around, digging through their bags, jostling items of some sort, right before she's back on the bed and whispering in his ear. "He knows that we're going to put him in-between us," she says, patting his back, and then she's gone again, and Mal's back to trying to keep up with the young godling buried in his arms. He pulls his mouth out of the kiss long enough to nip Lee on the jaw, to make him gasp, so Mal can pause long enough to catch his breath and take a bit of a mental bearing on their current chosen course.

He's still catching his breath, still gathering his strewn-across-the-black wits, so he ends up whispering into the skin of Lee's neck, "Are you sure you're okay with this?" before he even realizes that he's done it. It surprises him that he feels the need to ask this. It's not like he and Zoe haven't fucked strangers like this before.

Lee nods and pulls back so Mal can see his face. "I'm more than okay with it," he says, an odd expression ghosting across the finely boned features. "Trust me on that. I want this. I want this more than anything I've wanted in a long time."

Mal nods, as he gently lays a hand on the other man's jaw, unable to resist touching him as he nods again. _I need this,_ Mal hears in what's not said between them, still hears it when he leans forward and kisses him. _I need this so I know I'm not dead or dying. So I know I'm not like the rest of them_.

_You're not the only one,_ Mal thinks as he deepens the kiss. _Believe me, you're not the only one._

And from the way Lee clutches at his arms, Mal wonders if maybe River's powers haven't gotten contagious somehow.

The sheets shift beside them, and Zoe's hands are suddenly pushing in between them. "Uh, uh, boys," she says. "This isn't how we're going to do this, remember? We need to move things around a bit here."

Lee's smirking again as they pull apart, and Mal finds himself wondering what the younger man looks like when he actually smiles. There's a taste of it when Lee's the one who says, "Yes, ma'am" this time, but not enough. Not enough to not leave Mal hungry for more.

There's no time for that though. Now that Zoe's got them all moving forward in the same direction, she's also got them on a schedule. She's on her back with Lee on top of her within minutes, one dark hand buried in his hair while she kisses him, the other covered in lube and pushing various numbers of fingers in and out of his ass while she prepares him for Mal. Mal's mouth's going dry, but he can only sit there and watch because he knows from experience that Zoe doesn't want him "on board" until everything's absolutely ready. So he waits and he watches until Zoe finally lets Lee enter her before motioning to Mal to come over and join in. He's lining up when he hears Zoe tell Lee, "Just let us steer," and then he's not hearing anything but the rush of his own blood as he pushes his way in.

_Wuh duh ma huh tah duh fong kwong duh wai shung_, he thinks as he waits for the two bodies below him to adjust and start moving. He knew it had been a while, but still..."Lao Tyen yeh," he mutters into the back of Lee's wavy head. "Lao tyen yeh."

Lee's busy pulling in deep, deep breaths, but somehow he manages to talk. "I have no frakking idea what that means," he says, "but I have a feeling I'm in total agreement. Zoe..." he pleads.

Zoe smiles, and old war buddy or not, Mal feels the definite urge to smack her. "Okay, Mal," she says. "Move."

She doesn't have to tell him twice, he thinks, as he starts the push-pull, the pressing of flesh against flesh, that brings gasps out of all three of them. No, she doesn't have to tell him twice at all.

She also doesn't have to help him find the rhythm, as it turns out. It may have been a while since they performed this particular act, but they're still in synch enough that they can pick up on what each one of them needs to do. To push in, to pull out, to push up, to pull back. To grip here, to press there, and in the cause of making the most of the man trapped between them, to kiss here, to bite there, and occasionally to even lick and suck where needed.

Mal decides he can't decide what he likes best here: biting Lee's pretty neck, the way his ass grips Mal's cock, or the fact that Lee has obvious experience in just letting himself be carried along in the winds of the moment.

As he pushes his way towards orgasm, he decides he can't choose. He likes it all. The only thing he'd like better is if he were free to be able to move as hard and fast as he's beginning to really want to.

Beginning to want to so much that he's hoping that the look on Zoe's face still means the same thing it used to mean. Especially when she's chanting, "Guay....guay...guay..." under her breath with every one of their shared thrusts.

Finally, she stops chanting and lets her mouth widen, opening into a huge, soundless scream. When she finishes, her mouth closes, and her eyes follow suit.

It's at that moment Mal decides that it's time to spring Lee from where he's trapped in-between their two bodies. "I'm pulling out," he warns the other man, kissing his neck when he begins to protest. "Don't worry. We're not stopping. We're just changing locations, dong ma?"

Lee nods, somewhat shakily, but he follows Mal's lead in disengaging and moving away from Zoe. "I still don't understand half of what's said around here," he says, more to himself than Mal. "I need to do something about that..."

"Later," Mal says, suddenly deciding that he wants more than just a change of placement and number of partners. "On your back," he orders. "I want to be able to see you."

He's grateful when Lee doesn't say anything, just smirks at him and lies back.

Still, Mal thinks he ought to take it as a mission to knock that smirk right off that pretty face. He begins by grabbing Lee's hips and sliding into him fast and hard.

Lee's keeps on smirking, but the way he grips Mal's shoulders tells him that he's feeling it, as Mal pounds into him with every thrust. He's feeling it when those blue eyes widen, when that cute, little mouth falls open, when he starts moaning the way Zoe was chanting.

Of course, Mal knows it for sure when he shakes and jerks and comes all over both of their lower bodies.

Mal growls and leans in to kiss the still open mouth before pulling back, gripping harder, and emptying his own orgasm deep inside.

After that, Mal collapses for a bit. He thinks he remembers to roll over and not down, and when he comes back to himself, he's happy to see that this is where he is, lying to Lee's left and not on top of him. Beside him, Lee's eyes are closed, and from the way he's breathing softly, Mal guesses that he's out.

Zoe, meanwhile, is awake, her partially-open eyes speaking of temporary happiness and the satiation of the well-fucked. Mal smiles at her expression, even as he hates the fact that he knows that this is only a short-term result. That tomorrow she'll be a lonely widow again and he'll be the friend who wishes he could help and won't be able to. For right now though, it's enough. To know that for a short while she doesn't miss him and she can truly enjoy still being alive.

That they all can enjoy still being alive, he thinks, sharing that smile with Zoe while he lays a gentle hand on Lee's arm. That's something worth remembering. That she wasn't the only one who got something from this, who needed this. No matter how much Mal might hate to admit it.

Looking at Zoe, he gets the feeling that she's about to make him have to admit it.

But then, she surprises him. "River said the strangest thing to me the other day," she says. "She said she was tired of being our only pilot. That she knew a place where we could pick up a sky god if we wanted to, and if we negotiated the right way, we could probably get him at a discount."

Mal lifts his hand so that it's not just resting on Lee's arms, but so he can rub his thumb against Lee's skin. "Do tell," he says, letting that smile become a grin. "She didn't happen to say how to open these negotiations, did she? Or even give you an idea of exactly who she was talking about?"

The widening grin on Zoe's eyes tells him everything. "You know, now that you mention it...I think she might have."

Mal decides there's nothing he can say to that. Other than maybe, "Gods and goddesses. I'm surrounded by gods and goddesses."

Across the way from him, his goddess of war continues to smile.

Fin.


End file.
